Private Finished An Offer of Self-Defence

Rory scratched her cheek. "I had a team, I got ideas from them. And later on, I had this guy I knew who sort of mentored me. When I had a question, he helped me out. I trained more officially toward the — right before I came here.

"Before that, though, yeah just went out and did it."

Rory had a bad feeling. Like she was stepping into one of those situations where she was sure she'd do something stupid.

Yup. That was about what Rory expected. Not the worst thing that could have happened. "Uh, sure? What's the worst that could happen? When are you free?" A pause. "It's your brother, right?"

Right. Money. Rory considered telling her to keep it, but the truth was, people paid other people for their specialties and Lorelai knew if she told Zora no, it would have looked suspicious as fuck.

What kinds of business was this woman in any way? That a gang was after her? That her own brother was after her?

"the Black Wings, huh? I've heard that name thrown around." But Rory wasn't about to ask why they were after her in such a public place. "Yeah, okay, that works." Rory reached across the table to shake Zora's hand, grinning for the first time since she'd begun talking.

"It's Rory, by the way. That's something you'll need to know before we begin. We should probably go somewhere else to talk. It's pretty noisy here."

Rory frowned, thinking of a place. She turned and walked out of the shop, glancing over her shoulder once to make sure Zora was following her. "Okay, I know a place," she said after a bit of walking.

Rory cut through a few streets and down a side pathway to somewhere right outside the city. Far enough away for a level of privacy without being so far that safety was entirely out of reach. Not shrouded in forestry, but at the start of it, where trees grow in a clumpy pattern.

Lorelai spun to see Zora once they were out of city limits.

Rory noted Zora's wariness and nodded with a level of pride at it. "Okay, I'm going to give you this one for free, but, the first rule of self-defense is simple enough: don't get yourself in the situation in the first place." She held up a finger to indicate Zora shouldn't speak, then motioned around them.

"For instance, following someone you don't know out of city limits. Even if you think your security can handle me, it's an unnecessary risk."

Which brought up the good question of this security. Rory kept that in mind, as she had been the entire time talking to Zora.

She let that sink in, let Zora say whatever she needed to say before getting back into the meat of it. "I wanted to know what you can do. What're your powers? Do you have any?" because that was going to change how Zora had to learn to defend herself.